“Vraiment, mon cher, vous-avez chanté très bien ce soir, très bien, je vous assure!”
Then would come the German barytone in a double-breasted frock coat and punctiliously polite manner, saying:
“Erlauben Sie mir, Herr de Reszke, Ihnen meine grosse Hochachtung aus zu drücken für den wirklich ausgezeichneten Genuss den Sie uns heute Abend bereitet haben.”
He was followed by the Italian barytone, who would rush in impulsively and, kissing Jean on both cheeks, would exclaim:
“Caro mio, carissimo!” followed by a flood of Italian words.
Then came the real climax of the scene. Enter the electrician who, thrusting a “horny hand of toil” into that of de Reszke, would exclaim in real “Yankee” accents:
“Jean, you done fine!”
Edouard de Reszke, the huge bass brother with the heart of a child and an imperturbable good nature, was an equally good mimic. But his wonderful stories and impersonations were of a decidedly Rabelaisian character and will not bear repetition here.
With these two well-corseted but un-Corsican brothers, Madame Ternina or Madame Nordica, Madame Schumann-Heink, and David Bispham we gave performances of “Tristan” which came as near perfection as I ever hope to witness.
Madame Nordica had been for years a so-called “utility” singer at the Metropolitan. She had been trained in the French-Italian repertoire, and while her voice was beautiful she had not yet achieved full stardom, perhaps because she was American born and lacked the European cachet, which at that time was more important than it is to-day. She was not by nature musically gifted and was able to learn a rôle only by the hardest and most painful work of endless repetition and rehearsals. But her ambition was boundless—she bided her time and, like Lilli Lehmann, gradually worked herself into the Wagner repertoire. Realizing its advertising value, she offered herself to Madame Cosima Wagner for the “Lohengrin” production at Bayreuth. She meekly accepted every instruction given her there during the months of preparations, no matter how meticulous or artificial some of them seemed to her, and the success which she obtained there launched her successfully on her career as a Wagner singer. I trained her in the Brunhildes as well as Isolde and was amazed at the way in which she achieved through hard work what nature gives to others overnight.